Before the calico even landed back on the counter, her oldest sister was lapping up the few crumbs she’d overlooked, leaving Laurel to watch, a particularly peeved expression on her pointed face.
“I’m sorry, I really am,” Becca was repeating for the umpteenth time. She looked over at the calico on the counter and, wonder of wonders, reached for the bag of treats. Putting the phone down on the counter, she poured several into her palm.
“I can’t—this doesn’t make sense.” The tinny voice seemed to be repeating itself as Clara gobbled down two treats.Take that, Harriet, she thought.“I didn’t think she was that upset.”
“What?” The hand jerked out from beneath Clara. The little calico mewed in protest and her person returned it, even as she again lifted the phone to her ear. “Jeff, what are you saying?”
Clara finished the treats and licked Becca’s palm before looking up with what she hoped was an endearing expression.
“No, she didn’t—it wasn’t suicide.” More treats were not going to be forthcoming. Not while this call lasted. “What made you think…that?”
A loud howl from the floor. Harriet had seen the treats. Seen that her sister had gotten them before she did too.
“Hang on.” Becca went for the bag again, putting the phone on speaker.
“I thought, maybe…” The words were breathy and hesitant, and Clara could almost connect the distant voice to the man she remembered. She had found his boyishness adorable at one point. A little rough with the belly rubs, but tolerant of the sisters’ squabbling and their insistence on sleeping on the bed. But that memory was now overshadowed by another, of the gawky young man pacing back and forth as he explained to their person why he couldn’t be with her anymore. Boyish—try puppy-ish—and not in a good way. It always took him forever to get to the point, as Clara recalled.
“You see,” she heard him say, and Clara realized she could. He’d be pushing his too-long hair back from his forehead, a strained look on his dog-like face. “It’s just that, well, you know I’d gone out with Suzanne a few times. I mean, it wasn’t anything serious. But, well, what makes this all so awful is that I had just told her that I couldn’t see her anymore. Becca, I’d told her I wanted to try to win you back.”
Chapter 10
Becca didn’t sleep much that night either. The image of Suzanne’s too-white skin streaked with darkening blood might have been stained on the inside of her eyelids. Clara picked up on her restlessness and did her best to calm her, staying as still by her human’s side as she could. Not that it mattered.Even when Becca finally drifted off into an uneasy rest, Harriet kept waking her youngest sister with her own grumbling complaints.
“So selfish,” the big cat muttered.“Doesn’t she know I need my beauty rest?”
Clara didn’t respond. Her oldest sister could sleep anywhere—and did. But since Clara had gotten on her case about summoning that pillow out of the ether, she had made a point about what she’d had to sacrifice to live by what she called the “silly” rules. As if she didn’t know full well that the number one rule of feline magic is that cats must keep their powers secret.
Despite Harriet’s complaints, all the sisters knew that wasn’t difficult to do. People attribute all sorts of qualities to cats. Even the most mundane of their kind is considered mysterious, as if being beautiful and incredibly limber were special skills. But while it is true that some basic physical attributes—like a feline’s excellent night vision—are common to all cats, and most felines can conjure up a few supernatural tricks—that disappearing through walls thing Clara had used to follow Becca—only a few are actual witch cats. And, therefore, it was incumbent upon the three sisters to be extra careful.
Harriet sometimes said that they were descended from feline royalty, from the great Queen of Cats herself, and Clara knew that often other cats did treat them with a certain respect. But whether the claim of royal lineage had any basis in fact or was merely another of Harriet’s ploys for getting the best treats, her youngest sibling couldn’t tell for sure. Clara’s one distinct memory of their mother was of being licked by a warm, rough tongue. However, her injunction against revealing their power had stayed with Clara, even if her sisters chose to ignore it. The loyal calico could still clearly recall their tabby mother purring it into her ear even as she sent them off to the shelter to be adopted by the young woman they now served.
“Serve indeed!” Laurel was wakeful too. Needless to say, her memories—and her understanding of the injunction—differed from Clara’s, much as her ease at reading her sister’s thoughts illustrated the range of their powers. “It was pure chance Becca picked us,” said the sealpoint beauty as she leaped to the kitchen table, where Becca had abandoned her breakfast to peck away at her computer.“I knew I should have hissed at her. Then maybe some handsome banker would have taken us in.”
“Taken you, you mean.” Clara couldn’t help responding.“We were lucky to stay together.”
Laurel blinked her blue eyes demurely, which was as close to an acknowledgment as she would give, and leaned forward to sniff at Becca’s cereal bowl.
Becca, too intent on her computer, didn’t notice, not even when Laurel extended her pink tongue and began to lap up the leftover milk. Harriet did, though, and after a grunt of effort, landed with a thud by Clara’s side.
“Is that the Fruit Loops?” She nudged Laurel aside. Some things were worth the effort.“Are there any left?”
“What do you mean, ‘blocked’? ” Becca’s question didn’t even merit a tail flick from the sisters, seeing as how it wasn’t accompanied by any move to unseat them. Instead, her hands went to work on the keyboard in front of her. “I’ll show you ‘blocked,’” she muttered, typing furiously.
With her sisters occupied finishing Becca’s breakfast, Clara was free to study her face. For a human, Becca was almost catlike. Although she was significantly larger than they were, she was small for her kind, and her short, brown hair lay close to her head, much like their fur did. It was the expression on her face, however, that heldClara this morning. When she focused, as she was doing, her lips pursed slightly. If she’d had whiskers, they’d be bristling, the calico thought. Pointing forward, almost. And as if she were truly one of their litter, her intense stare made it evident that she was on the prowl—though how she could trace anything through her computer was beyond the feline who watched her so closely. True, it was warm and at times it purred, but Clara didn’t think that even Becca’s constant stroking and murmuring could make the silver machine give forth the kind of prey that would interest one of her own kind.
“There!” With a final, triumphant slap at the keyboard, Becca sat back, and realization dawned on Clara. Whatever kind of hunt the young woman before her had managed, using this device and her own rather closely cropped claws, she had made a successful pounce.
“So much for wanting me back, Jeff Blakey. So much for nothing serious…” A few more keystrokes followed and then a sudden intake of breath. “Oh!” Her voice was soft. “Oh.”
“What?” Laurel looked up, a rime of milk around her brown snout.“Is she okay?”
“Like you care.” Clara rubbed up against Becca’s hand, partly to comfort her and partly to gain access. As Laurel licked her chops and began to bathe, Clara focused in on the picture in front of her. Sure enough, up on the screen was Becca’s ex-boyfriend, posed in front of the software startup where he spent his days. Even in this flat miniature, with none of the reassuring confirmation of scent, the calico cat recognized those floppy bangs, the broad, easy grin that her person had thought so charming. With a slow blink of her round, green eyes, Clara also realized that she recognized the woman in the picture—the one he had his armaround. Tall, blonde, slim. Suzanne.